EDIT: Ive recently switched out the spirits conduit for the barbed shot conduit while using nylas burrs. With my already high haste, this has made keeping the 3 haste stacks from barbed shot up almost always 100% of the time, it also lets me cast more bestial wraths which in turn lets me cast more barbed shots on top of more dps cd’s and more bestial wraths also means my rylaks gets put into play more with it increasing pet crit damage during beastial wrath, its all synergising nicely. Ive noticed another bump in my dps so this might be the route to take if youve got around 27% haste.
heya BM hunters, been helping another BM up their dps so thought Id post some tips here. I parse very well usually in raid with my best performing average at 97% and in mythic plusses up to 16 so far Ive been very competitive. I am ilv 223 so my opinion is based on higher gear levels so far. I have absolutely no advice for pvp as I dont pvp.
EMBERS OR RYLAKS?
-Embers is a dps gain, BUT Rylaks is more than fine and is actually a dps gain on any crazy fights with alot of chaos and movement where its too crazy to use embers or its too easy to miss.
-Rylaks is a dps boost you know you can use on every bestial wrath so its good for burst windows.
-If you are going to use embers then make sure to cast tar trap, then any gcd attack, then flare, otherwise it wont work, unless your shooting trap and flare directly under you in that case there is no travel time for trap and you can cast both quickly right in a row.
-Just remember for embers the only mobs that catch fire will be the ones that trap explodes on, you cannot path mobs through the trap after its caught fire with flare, flare will not ignite the ground only the mobs initially caught in the trap.
-for maximum AoE never waste time with embers when using spirits, embers does NOT interact with spirits, on pull cast wild spirits and your other cool downs and go ham, to take the 3 gcd time to use embers will put you at the bottom of the pack in aoe, use embers after wild spirits expires and on cd after that until its wild spirits time again.
-Honestly since the buff to Rylaks Ive been using it more and more instead of Embers, I definately use it on high movement fights like Sire and on Sludge since its very hard to use embers and watch your footwork with the horrible camera angles in the sludge fight since ranged are usually along the wall. Embers is good on fights like huntsman and hungering, but really you could get away with just using Rylaks if your lazy and your dps wont lose much if anything. It sims higher but it requires perfect play to actually dps higher on long boss fights. Rylaks is just plain easier to use therefore might be much better dps gain for most of you.
AOE
Like I explained in the embers section, on pull of big packs just use wild spirits, and your other dps cooldowns and go ham, you should be able to get 20k dps and if its a long aoe fight that might settle at 10 to 15k end of fight. You would use wild spirits and any trinket or other cooldowns except beastial wrath then 2 barbed shots immediately then beastial wrath as you should be using the talent that makes beastial wrath give you 2 charges of barbed shot then your rotation described below.
I use Rylaks for most mythic plusses lately since packs die way too fast to take advantage of embers usually but if you were gonna use Embers, you would wait for Wild spirits to expire then start using embers in your aoe rotation for the rest of the pack.
Marksman was able to beat that by far before but now not so much. If you burst correctly you can land up with very similar end of fight dps even if the MM peaks at 40k, for whatever reason we sustain better and dps has looked pretty even to me when I compete with MM’s in mythic plus 15’s at the end of big long aoe pulls. The shorter the aoe fight the higher the MM dps and the bigger the difference in our numbers. We excel at longer fights. We burst lower than MM but if done correctly we still look like pretty good aoe bursters WHEN WILD SPIRITS IS UP and theres 5 mobs minimum for an extended time.
For normal aoe with or without cooldowns you want to focus on keeping your buffs up. That means beast cleave and barbed shot haste. So you use barbed shot and multishot just to keep those buffs up, kill command on cd and cobra shot every once in a while if you need filler but the higher your haste the less youll use cobra shot in aoe as youll get alot of barbed shots in with the multishot. I use Tell me when addon to show my buff icons in middle of my screen so I know when both beastcleave and 3 stacks of haste buff are up, it makes it very easy to keep the buffs up, you can also use weak auras. Both require some setup but its worth it. My rotation will look a little like: multishot, barbed shot, killcommand, multishot, cobra shot, barbed shot, multishot etc (so multishot every 3rd cast, sometimes 4th cast but 3 is good) The important thing is keeping the 3 haste stacks and beastcleave going nonstop.
SINGLE TARGET
Wild spirits is still really powerful on single target so open with that and then your other cooldowns and go nuts without going focus starved, that means careful with the number of cobra shots you use. My rotation will look like this after the dps cooldowns except beastial wrath: barbed shot, barbed shot, beastial wrath barbed shot, kill command, cobra, cobra, barbed, cobra, cobra, barbed etc. Just use kill command on cd but the main focus here is to keep the 3 stacks of haste from barbed shot up almost constantly, it will drop off sometimes but if played well you can keep it up almost indefinitely.
TALENTS
Beast companion
Scent of Blood
Natural mending
Thrill of the Hunt
Post haste
Stomp
Aspect of the beast
STATS
Stack haste as much as possible, crit also and verse has been doing well for me when I add that, mastery is horrible try to get gear that minimises your mastery and buffs everything else with the focus on haste. Things will change when we can gear better but for this period in the xpac try to get as much haste as possible. My dps recently spiked because of valor gear, I farmed rings and neck and bracer that had big chunks of haste with a smaller chunk of crit, one of my rings is the opposite, crit then haste. This really helped maxing them out to 220. If you can, replace any gear that has mastery. I still have like 30% mastery so its not easy but it was like 35% before. Now Ive got something like 26% haste, 23% crit, 7% verse, its made a difference.
CONDUIT
Niyas burrs has been performing really well, the one offensive conduit you can fit in there is the wild spirits one or bloodletting, wild spirits if you plan on alot of aoe, bloodletting makes it much easier to keep up the 3 barbed shots stacks which under pressure might be a massive dps increase since when things get hairy we often lose our 3 stacks which can drop your dps alot. If bloodletting lets you keep the 3 stacks up the entire boss fight then that is more valuable then the extra burst with wild spirits.
MACRO
Add these lines to a macro for each of your attacks:
/use [@pettarget]Claw
/use [@pettarget]Bite
/use [@pettarget]Smack
Apparently the default attack speed of your pets is actually too slow, adding these attack commands makes them attack faster and use their abilities more. I noticed a spike in my dps when I started using the macro.
So cobra shot macro looks like this:
/cast Cobra Shot
/use [@pettarget]Claw
/use [@pettarget]Bite
/use [@pettarget]Smack
CONCLUSION
Dont stress too much if you start the fight bottom of pack, we sustain really well, never stop casting, we dont have to stop for any reason unless running out of range, so dont stop your rotation while doing all mechanics and you will creep up the meter to land up somewhere competitive if you played right. I find beastmastery easier to play, which means its easier to play OPTIMALLY whereas alot of the current high dps classes are more difficult and on long crazy fights their dps will take a dip while ours just keeps going strong. The sims show the best in the world, youre not gonna play against those guys, youre just not lol. If you can play beastmaster optimally you will be an asset to your raid, unless your in a worlds first guild but who the frik is that actually? a tiny percentage of people not the people you will be playing with. I laugh when I see people mention the sims over and over when they cant actually play their class well enough that it makes a difference what they play. Beastmastery is easy to play well so if youre doing it right you can be perfectly viable. If I wasnt able to pull my weight my raid leader would have asked me to change specs but Im often in a top 7-4 position at end of fight with MM under me or next to me.
Again this is at ilv 223 with a raid. Heroic and Mythic raid level.
